Windsor Link Railway funding plans approved by Network Rail

A lot of this is about tidying up the Windsor situation where you have two stations, fairly close to each other, but separate, and serving very different markets.

Centralising that into a single station with links in both directions makes a lot of sense in terms of travel flexibility, and releases a lot of land for redevelopment.

castlebar/ianvisits - I agree that with both that and a Heathrow link, the project becomes an alternative to the usually-toted western access to the airport. On its own, tho', you would have to release an awful lot of land to repay the cost of the project. Typically, land constitutes about 20-30% of development costs in urban centres, so we would have to be looking at a half-billion development or thereabouts. That is big - we'd be looking at a Westfield or similar - not sure I can see a releasable site of that size. Perhaps a theme park instead - the "Windsor Experience"; on second thoughts...

G

@ xercesfobe

Re "3"

Why???

SURELY you know the extant Slough-Windsor (ex-GWR)line was once double tracked, (poss broad gauge) but is single tracked now. So there is capacity

WHY are you suggesting going under the Thames when the existing, now single line goes over.
IF you go under the Thames(!!), where do you go from there??
DO you have any local knowledge??

I lived in Slough for over 20 years and go to Slough and Windsor very frequently

PLEASE! think about this one, how do you get from the Windsor side of the Thames bridge to the former Southern lines without destroying the riverside at Windsor?

windsorlink.co.uk/

XF

As far as I can tell from the rather sketchy details on the website windsorlink.co.uk/why/for-my-area/windsor/, the proposal is for a cut and cover route on the south (Windsor) bank, running from somewhere near Black Potts viaduct (the LSWR crossing of the Thames), past Riverside station, along Datchet Road and Thames Avenue, and through the coach park, then rising up somewhere (where? this is the most intrusive bit) to meet the existing GWR viaduct before it crosses the Thames. All for £150m? Including a new subsurface station, as neither of the existing ones are on this alignment?

And for what? Windsor itself is a major traffic generator, but how much potential through traffic is there between Slough and Staines? Bear in mind that the Waterloo-Staines route already has connections to the GW lines, via Reading. For that matter, changing trains at Windsor is very easy - the stations are less than 400 yards apart - about the same as changing from Piccadilly to Thameslink at Kings Cross/St Pancras, but step-free!